Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be described as a branch of computer science that examines the processes of human intelligence with the goal of synthetizing intelligence and establishing ideal thinking and behavior. We are routinely interacting with AI-based systems. When you look for information on Google, follow a recommendation for a new show on Netflix or even ask Siri what the weather forecast is for the next day, you are doing so thanks to AI.

Nowadays, companies are operating in increasingly complex environments, and must continuously take actions to improve their business processes and decision-making. One way to do so is to incorporate Artificial Intelligence to improve the effectiveness of operations through automation (replacing human decision-making and actions with technology) and augmentation (supporting and improving human decision-making and actions with technology). Although the development of genuinely artificial intelligent machines has yet to happen, the consensus is that the potential uses of AI could go beyond impacting the nature of work and will likely change economic mechanisms and business models.

However, there is uncertainty for businesses on how to manage AI and its imperfections. When developing the algorithm for AI, developers can make errors or unconsciously introduce prejudices, or the data used to train the algorithm can be biased, which could result in the algorithm being skewed. If those situations arise in an artificial intelligence system that is so complicated that a human cannot understand how the AI arrived at this conclusion (called Black box AI), errors may go unnoticed.

Dr. Elisa Gagnon, Associate Professor at the Williams School of Business, was awarded a FRQSC Research Support for New Academics for the project Rethinking How Humans and Machines Make Sense Together. With this project, Dr. Gagnon aims to enhance our understanding of explainable AI. Explainable AI is the opposite of black box AI; as such, it is transparent, and humans can understand how the AI arrived at its conclusion. With explainable AI, humans and machines can work together to augment and enhance each other’s capabilities, explains Dr. Gagnon. This study addresses a specific emerging challenge in the practice of AI. It aims to examine where we should draw the line between rejecting and embracing black box AI. This research project should facilitate the development of guidelines and the move to the design, development, and practices of explainable AI.

The Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) support and promote excellence in research, and the training of the next generation of researchers. In June, the results of their 2022-2023 competitions were made available to the research community. The aim of the Research Support for New Academics program is to help support a new generation of university academics by assisting early-career faculty to establish themselves as independent researchers, become competitive nationally and internationally, and train the next generation of students.

The Research Support Fund (RSF) of the Government of Canada is a program that provides funds to cover a portion of the costs associated with managing the research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Research Support Fund grants are based on the funding received by researchers from the three federal agencies in the three most recent years for which data are available. One major objective of the RSF is to support the costs for management and administration of the institution’s research enterprise, which includes a portion of the costs associated with salary expenses for staff members who provide administrative support to the Office of Research and Graduate Studies (ORGS).

Thanks to the RSF, the ORGS recently hired Blazena Sokol in the new Administrative Assistant Research & Graduate Studies position. Blazena holds a legal administrative assistant certificate and has been working in an office environment for over twenty years, working for Stanley T. Couple PLC, Campbell Strata Management and Highland Foundry Ltd. In her role as Administrative Assistant Research & Graduate Studies, Blazena will provide general administrative, operational, coordination and technical support for the conduct of research programs and the ORGS. 

If you have any question for the ORGS, do not hesitate to contact us!

Dr. Osire Glacier of the Department of Religion, Society and Culture has authored a new monograph entitled Freedom for Morocco: A Family Tale.

Freedom for Morocco: A Family Tale is a historical and autobiographical book. By weaving together two intertwined narratives, a personal account invites readers into the home of one Moroccan family. A collective narrative reveals the shared struggles of Moroccan citizens for democracy.  By alternating between micro- and macro-histories, this book presents fragments that have long been erased from the history of contemporary Morocco.  Thus, it offers a corrective re-examination of concepts and key events conveyed by official historical sources from 1921 to the present day, notably Morocco’s anti-colonial uprisings, the emergence of neocolonialism under the guise of formal independence, the institutionalization of predatory capitalism, the establishment of a democratic façade, the Islamization politics of the governing elite and the emergence of Islamism.

Dr. Glacier new book is available on this website.

On June 10, 2022, 1:00 p.m., Bishop’s University will officially announce the appointment of Dr. Genner Llanes-Ortiz, Assistant Professor of the Department of Sociology, as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Digital Indigeneities. To begin the event, The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau and The Honourable Geneviève Hébert will say a few words. Then, Dr. Llanes-Ortiz will hold a Storytelling Panel discussion with a few guests, during which they will exchange stories on how they envision and understand the role digital media currently play or should play in the protection and reclamation of Indigenous ways of knowing. This activity will take place in the Bishop’s Library Learning Commons Agora, and is open to the public.

Indigenous peoples employ multiple technologies to preserve and promote their history, languages, and knowledge. This revitalization movement sometimes take the form of digital media activism, where Indigenous peoples (re)adapt cultural practices, and use digital media and tools, for cultural and linguistic revitalization, and political mobilization. The diverse ways in which Indigenous peoples use and transform these digital technologies is what we call Digital Indigeneities.

As Canada Research Chairholder, Dr. Genner Llanes-Ortiz proposes to collaboratively investigate Digital Indigeneities in the Americas, namely, how Indigenous peoples in Canada, Mexico and Guatemala develop and use digital technologies to reclaim, protect and stimulate their cultural and language heritage. This initiative will be the first to bridge Indigenous researchers and activist networks from Latin America with First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada to analyze and showcase the ways Indigenous peoples are using technological advancements to sustain and cultivate their identities, knowledge, life ways, languages, and traditions. Digital media adaptation and its possibilities to support Indigenous cultural and language revitalization are currently discussed by Indigenous scholars in North America, but relevant examples and academic contributions from Indigenous Latin America are still missing in these discussions, explains Dr. Llanes-Ortiz. Conversations between North America and Latin America have been limited by their different colonial languages (English vs French, Spanish vs Portuguese), as well as by how differently Indigenous peoples express and protect their knowledge and identities. As an Indigenous Maya researcher and now holder of a Canada Research Chair, I hope to facilitate these important conversations and build bridges across these different contexts.

Dr. Llanes-Ortiz’s participatory research program will thus explore four interrelated areas of Digital Indigeneities, which all focus on the reclamation of Indigenous languages and knowledges. Dr. Llanes-Ortiz and his team will work collaboratively with Indigenous partners to follow research protocols that support Indigenous ownership and control of data and information. In this way, they will create a repository of Indigenous language digital activism, which describes a wide range of initiatives (e.g., films, podcast, blogs, applications, etc.) that aim to prevent Indigenous language displacement and loss. They will also support the digitization of Indigenous cultural archives and collections in Canada to increase their accessibility. This research program will also work on the creation of interactive digital maps of interest for First Nations in Canada and Indigenous peoples in Mexico and Guatemala, using for example audiovisual recordings and photographs, local knowledge and practice or environmental information. Finally, they will engage with Indigenous activists to discuss and analyze the impact that their activities have on Indigenous debates.

In collaboration with different Indigenous partners in Canada and in the Maya region (Mexico and Guatemala), Dr. Llanes-Ortiz’s Canada Research Chair research program will contribute to redressing the pernicious legacies of settler colonialisms in the Americas. The digital tools, methods, and platforms that his team will investigate and build up with Indigenous partners also have the potential to be used as pedagogic aids to develop culturally relevant education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and youth.

Bishop’s University is proud to announce that Dr. Vicki Chartrand, Dr. Genner Llanes-Ortiz and Dr. Alex Miltsov of the Sociology Department received a Race, Gender and Diversity Initiative grant for the Unearthing Justices Partnership (UJP): Digital Mapping of Indigenous Grassroots Resources and Supports for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit+ (MMIWG2S+) People project. This research project will be done in collaboration with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers Gladys Radek (Tears4Justice) and Viola Thomas (Protect Our Indigenous Sisters Society), along with many Indigenous partners involved in addressing MMIW2S+ people. The goal of UJP is to partner with Indigenous-based collectivities to collaboratively organize and mobilize Indigenous-led and Indigenous-based resources and supports to address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit + People.

Having concluded that the long-term and ongoing murders and disappearances of Indigenous women, girls, and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S+) people is genocide, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019) made 231 Calls to Justice in relation to culture, health, security, and criminal justice to address the ongoing colonial dispossession and systemic, racialized, and gendered violence against MMIWG2S+ people. While the violence against MMIWG2S+ people is well documented, there has been less consideration of how Indigenous families and communities have actively navigated the terrain where justice continues to be absent, elusive, or invasive, if not violent. To address this challenge and heed the Calls to Justice, the UJP partnership seeks to digitally map, showcase, and share Indigenous-led and Indigenous-based models and resources of support for the MMIWG2S+ people through the development of a national website and other digital media platforms.

This research partnership seeks to: 1) to center and build on Indigenous families and communities’ existing capacities, strengths, and self-determination to address the murders, disappearances, and violence; 2) to make visible the important work that already exists in Indigenous communities for public education, policy and program innovations, and potential funding; 3) to facilitate connections and networks and the sharing of resources between Indigenous groups and individuals involved in the MMIWG2S+ people work; and 4) to analyze and establish a digital based infrastructure and other media of resources and supports to address violence against MMIWG2S+ people.

The goal of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Race, Gender and Diversity Initiative is to support community-based and community-led research partnerships with postsecondary institutions that are grounded in the lived experience of underrepresented or disadvantaged groups and that analyze the causes and persistence of systemic racism and discrimination. Leadership by people from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups in research projects about race, gender and diversity is important to help ensure the research is grounded in the complexities of the lived experiences and histories of diverse groups and individuals, and to inform more rigorous and relevant policy and program design. On May 9^th 2022, the results of the 2021 competition were made available to the research community. With the high rate of applications, this success rate of this competition was under 30%, and we are more than impressed that the application by Dr. Vicki Chartrand, Dr. Genner Llanes-Ortiz and Dr. Alex Miltsov ranked in the top of the second sextile. Congratulations on this exciting result!

To learn about Indigenous initiatives for MMIWG2S+, support and grow community resources and creative justices, consult the Unearthing Justices Resource Collection.

Dr. Andrew MacDonald, who retired last year after 34 years in the Department of Music at Bishop’s University, is known for his contributions to contemporary Canadian classical, jazz, and electronic music, as an educator, composer, and performer. In December 2021, he was appointed to the Order of Canada for his extraordinary contributions to the Canadian nation. Moreover, his compositions have won many prestigious prizes, including the Best Classical Composition JUNO Award in 1995.

In March 2022, Centrediscs and Naxos released his 20^th album, Music of the City and the Stars, in which he performs the electric archtop guitar alongside the Quatuor Saguenay, composed of violinists Marie Bégin and Nathalie Camus, violist Luc Beauchemin, and cellist David Ellis. While the album is currently available on digital platforms, the physical copy will be released at the launch concert in Bandeen Hall at 8 p.m. on June 9^th, 2022. Free tickets can be reserved at the Centennial Theatre box office and donations for humanitarian relief in Ukraine will be accepted at the door.

Music of the City and the Stars features two new compositions by Dr. MacDonald. The opening work, Lyra, is a musical examination of the constellation Lyra set in seven movements. The piece opens with Hermes’ invention of the lyre as his gift to Apollo, and follows it through the magical hands of Orpheus as he encounters the Argonauts, Eurydice, Hades, and finally the Bacchants. The work closes with Zeus placing the lyre in the heavens in memory of the great musical wizard. Exotic string writing and electronic effects applied to the guitar create an eerie and timeless atmosphere. The album’s companion work, Restless City, features both concerto-like exchanges and intimate expressive passages. Set in three substantial movements, this jazz-inspired composition pays homage to bebop legends Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron and Thelonious Monk.

This work was made possible in part thanks to a Bishop’s Research and Creative Activity grant, which are funds awarded for clearly-defined research projects or creative activities likely to result in peer-reviewed dissemination.  Although the electric guitar and the string quartet are well represented in their respective repertoire fields, there is only a handful of compositions where they are heard together as one ensemble, explains Dr. MacDonald. One of the artistic questions I wished to investigate was how to successfully combine acoustic and electronic sonorities in a meaningful way. These two disparate sound worlds come together when the string quartet engages in extended bowing and pitch manipulation techniques while the guitar takes on electronic extensions of its sonority.

We hope to see you at Bandeen on June 9^th!

At Bishop’s University, one way to showcase research is through the annual Research Week. Among other activities, from March 28 to April 1, the Office of Research and Graduates studies organized a showcase for our research activities, including a Research Poster and a Research Snapshot competition to highlight our talented student researchers. For both competitions, undergraduate and graduate students had to present a research project for which they made an active and significant contribution.

While posters were up all week in Centennial Lobby, the official public presentation of posters on March 31^st was an opportunity for students participating in the Research Posters competition to practice presenting their research project in a conference or a meeting. Two prizes were awarded by the jury, and submissions were evaluated based on the content and layout of the posters.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Natural Sciences, the winner was Victoria Benny of the Department of Biological Sciences for the project Scent discrimination of antibiotic-treated and intact male ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) by conspecifics. Thanks to an Undergraduate Research Assistantship – Plan Réussite award, Victoria was a research assistant of Dr. Marylène Boulet of the Department of Biological Sciences during the Winter 2022 semester. Victoria examined the effect of antibiotic treatment on the scent of healthy ring-tailed lemurs, highly social primates that communicate via scent secretion, by measuring the response their odorant generates in other lemurs. Such research allowed them to better understand scent perception in primates, which includes humans.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Social Sciences, Education and Business, the winner was Kyra Simons of the Department of Psychology for the project Gender differences in climate worry and parental role. Under the supervision of Catherine Malboeuf-Hurtubise, Kyra examined gender differences in climate change worry and perceived parental role in Quebec parents. Intriguing considerations regarding future research were prompted through parent’s responses.

After the official public presentation of the posters, the Bishop’s community was invited to attend the Research Snapshots competition, during which participants had only three minutes to present their research project in a language accessible for the general public. Three prizes were awarded by the jury, and submissions were evaluated based on participants’ presentation and scientific communication skills, as well as the structure and content of their presentation.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Natural Sciences, the winner was Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco of the Department of Physics & Astronomy for the project Understanding Accretion in Quasars. Quasars are extremely bright supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies that consume hot gas from their environment. Recently, some quasars were observed to dim very suddenly. Since the summer of 2021, under the supervision of Dr. John Ruan of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Virginia has been working on understanding this newly found behavior using Ultraviolet and X-ray images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Social Sciences, Education and Business, the winner was Audrey Richard of the Department of Psychology for the project Are you still watching? The antecedents and outcomes of binge-watching. Under the supervision of Dr. Courtney Plante of the Department of Psychology, Audrey examined the potential affective outcomes of binge-watching in terms of well-being whilst taking into consideration the viewer’s motivations to binge-watch and the differing phenomenology of the activity. Her findings highlight the importance to adopt a nuanced approach to understanding binge-watching, and the potential of an extended immersion into fictious universes in providing support to individuals.

In the category Graduate Students, the winner was Samuel Gagnon-Hartman of the Department of Physics & Astronomy for the project How fast is the Universe expanding, Really? Supervised by Dr. John Ruan of the Department of Physics & Astronomy and thanks to a Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS M), Samuel is enabling a measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe using gravitational waves. This method suffers from biases which Samuel is working to correct using advanced methods in statistics and machine learning.

Research is a fundamental part of Bishop’s University’s mandate. Our student and faculty researchers contribute, and must continue to contribute to the generation of new knowledge, to mobilizing this knowledge to relevant community partners and research users and, in doing so, contribute to innovation and economic development of the region, province and country. Congratulations to our winners, and to all the participants. Thank you for showcasing the amazing research taking place at Bishop’s. You can read more about Research Week in the April edition of The Campus.

The Research Support Fund (RSF) of the Government of Canada is a program that provides funds to cover a portion of the costs associated with managing the research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Research Support Fund grants are based on the funding received by researchers from the three federal agencies in the three most recent years for which data are available. One major objective of the RSF is to help promote knowledge mobilization, the act of transforming knowledge into action. Bishop’s University is committed to knowledge mobilization, which is reflected in our Research Strategic Plan. Bishop’s student and faculty researchers contribute and must continue to contribute to the generation of new knowledge, to mobilizing this knowledge to relevant community partners and users of the research and, in doing so, contribute to innovation and economic development of the region, province and country.

Funds from the RSF are helping Bishop’s University increase the impact of our research through a membership in The Conversation Canada. Launched in 2017, The Conversation Canada/La Conversation Canada is a daily independent online source of news and views, from the academic and research community, delivering analysis and explanatory journalism directly to the public. To be published by The Conversation, you must be currently employed as a researcher or academic with a university or university-affiliated research institution. Professional editors work with academics and researchers to make their knowledge accessible and free to a wider public. In 2021, more than 500 media outlets around the world republished The Conversation Canada articles in Canada and beyond. Publishing in The Conversation often leads to further outreach, such as providing research expertise to media outlets to comment on current events.

Since 2018, Bishop’s University researchers have published 42 articles with The Conversation. The reach of these articles extended to more than 800,000 views – an average of more than 19,000 views per article. All authors have access to an analytics dashboard that illustrates the impact of their articles, an invaluable tool to demonstrate knowledge mobilization activities, an increasingly important element in grant applications. On his experience publishing with The Conversation, Dr. David Webster of the Department of History and Global Studies has this to say: I have had thousands of reads and lots of engagement with my research through The Conversation. It offers a splendid chance to reach the public and excellent editing help. In the age of paywalls, The Conversation is a terrific example of opening access to research findings.

Interested in publishing with The Conversation? On April 6, 2022, at noon, come and meet Editor-in-Chief Scott White who will explain the mission of The Conversation Canada, offer some background on how it helps academics with knowledge mobilization and give some tips on how to pitch a really great story idea. This is an interactive workshop where participants are encouraged to bring story ideas to discuss. No registration required: Click here to join the meeting

Jaeden Bardati is a Physics Honours student with double minors in Mathematics and Computer Science, and is the co-founder and co-lead of Bishop’s Astronomy, Mathematics, & Physics Society (AMPS). For the summer 2022, Jaeden has been accepted into the very selective PSI START program at the prestigious Perimeter Institute.

The Perimeter Institute is a leading center for scientific research, training and educational outreach in foundational theoretical physics. Located in Ontario, its mission is to advance our understanding of the universe at the most fundamental level, stimulating the breakthroughs that could transform our future. Perimeter also trains the next generation of physicists through innovative programs.

For their international PSI START program (Perimeter Scholars International – Students’ Training Accelerator for Research in Theory), they invite 50 students to a part-time 10-week online school in theoretical physics. During this training, Jaeden will learn research tools and collaboration skills while immersed in the multi-disciplinary environment of the world’s largest independent theoretical physics research centre.

Jaeden was also one of ten students worldwide to be offered a paid internship at the Perimeter Institute next summer, a chance to be fully immersed in Perimeter’s renowned research environment and work on projects alongside Perimeter researchers. However, Jaeden decided to decline this internship offer to continue working with Dr. John Ruan of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.

Jaeden started doing research on supermassive black holes with Dr. Ruan during the summer of 2021, thanks to an Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). In his research, Jaeden is using cosmological simulations of galaxy formation to develop new approaches to identifying the host galaxy counterparts of supermassive black hole mergers detected in low-frequency gravitational waves.

This summer, thanks to a second NSERC USRA award, Jaeden, under the supervision of Dr. Ruan, will complete this project and plans to write his first scientific paper on the topic. He will also be provided the opportunity to present the results of this project at scientific meetings. I am very grateful and excited to be a part of these great opportunities. I look forward to learning more about theoretical topics in physics while continuing to be a part of Dr. Ruan’s amazing research team, says Jaeden. In the fall of 2023, after completing his undergraduate degree at Bishop’s University, Jaeden plans on attending graduate school in Physics. Due to Bishops’ great physics faculty and all the research opportunities that a smaller university brings, I am confident that my undergraduate degree is preparing me with the tools and knowledge to be successful in graduate school.

On Saturday, February 19, 10:30 a.m., Bishop’s University officially announced the appointment of Dr. Sunny Lau, Associate Professor at the School of Education, as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Plurilingual Teaching and Learning. To begin the event, The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau et The Honourable Geneviève Hébert said a few words. Then, Dr. Lau and her colleague Dr. Geneviève Brisson from the Département de pédagogie de l’Université de Sherbrooke, offered a workshop for parents who are interested in supporting their children’s second language learning at home. The bilingual workshop (mostly English and French) aims to introduce and demonstrate strategies to use stories as means to promote children’s love for reading and their critical literacy and thinking across languages. This activity has been recorded and is available on the Canada Research Chair in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning web page.

Not everyone learns the same way. When it comes to learning a new language, being able to compare it to and make connections with a language you already know can enhance understanding and promote effective learning. Thus, having a teacher who might not speak all the languages but knows how to support students to make cross-language connections can facilitate the learning. This is what we call plurilingual education: the use of students’ plurilingual and pluricultural resources in the classroom to promote the use of transferable language strategies and knowledge for more in-depth learning.

In the Eastern Townships and elsewhere in Canada, the number of students whose mother tongue is neither English nor French is rapidly increasing. When learning English or French as a second (or even third) language, those students can benefit from plurilingual teaching which allows them to see the relevance of their languages and cultures in the learning of the target language(s) and subject content.

As Canada Research Chairholder in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning, Dr. Sunny Lau aims to bring plurilingual teaching and learning to Canada’s classroom. Dr. Lau’s research highlights how language strategies used in one language can be applied in another language for more in-depth learning, and how this helps lessen the fear of acquiring a second or even third language.  “Many immigrant learners have competence in more than one language and culture, but these resources are often not being fully recognized and mobilized by teachers in language and content area classrooms,” explains Dr. Lau. “Most of these students are already plurilingual in the sense that they have competence in more than one language, and students are constantly making links to languages they know and use language strategies and learning strategies that they have to help themselves learn a new language.” 

In collaboration with her research team and with English and French teachers, Dr. Lau develops plurilingual teaching methods that embrace the use of different languages in the classroom and answer the needs of diverse learners. Dr. Lau’s research will also contribute to the training of teachers and help reconfigure schools’ curriculum in Quebec, Canada and beyond.

Please visit Dr. Sunny Lau Canada Research Chair web page for more information on her research.